The really interesting thing about this collection is that, taken chronologically, you can hear Seefeel’s sound evolving… rapidly over a very short period of time. It’s important to note that all of the band’s Too Pure EPs were released in quick succession during 1993, as was the band’s debut LP, Quique, which contained only one track from those EPs. The album was effectively all new, previously unreleased material. Suggesting that the 5 friends were working, and developing musically, at an incredible rate. 

Famously as inspired by The Orb as they were My Bloody Valentine, Seefeel filtered shoegaze through electronica, employing machines and manipulation to create compositions of sighing, seesawing, ethereal, Kevin Shields-esque drones. Their ringing the IDM equivalent of feedback. 

More Like Space, Seefeel’s first release, with its great rhythm section, is still rooted in rock, all be it distantly. The live playing locked in its own loop. Hypnotic, on the surface repetitive. Something which deep (stoned) listening revealed to be constantly shifting. Sarah Peacock’s seemingly wordless, angelic vocals were treated so that they were almost indiscernible from the layers of other instruments. Frequencies fizzing, bass-lines booming, details drenched in dub delay. With flickering rhythms collaged from live and programmed drumming, broken bits of beats, which slowly reveal themselves to be kinda tribal. 

Blue Easy Sleep still has mistreated guitars screaming, wailing, way down in the mix. Time To Find Me is Seefeel at their most sensual, sexy. The track’s AFX remixes – the Fast, with its blips of synthetic slapped bass, cowbell, whistles and tumbling, rolling mutated go-go rhythm – the Slow, dropped to perhaps 1/4 speed and all the more psychedelic for it, a sea of blinking signals, high notes held and stretched – both are super sought after, but the OG certainly ain’t no slouch. Its slow thud and pulse like 2 heartbeats aligning, intertwining. The hazy harmonies coming in woozy, shimmering waves, summoning serenity from sheets of sheer noise. The song more of a mantra, the teasing title chanted over and over. 

The much-loved Minky Starshine opens orchestral and symphonic, but quickly switches to grainy and glitched. The track’s melody breaking up, as if falling back into orbit. Disintegrating re-entering gravity’s pull. The rhythmic repetition resembling the modern motorik of Nisennenmondai.

Plainsong races on rocky drums. Sonically related to Spacemen 3, Slowdive and Lush. Its “Sine Bubble Embossed Dub”, however, betrays nights spent in abandon, dancing to seamless soundtracks of techno and trance. By the end of the year Seefeel had signed to pioneering electronica label Warp and 1995’s sophomore, Succour, was something quite different again. 

Seefeel’s Pure, Impure can be ordered directly from Beggars Arkive UK.